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This paper offers an analysis of the relations between youth and the socialist state in contemporary Vietnam, which sheds light on the wider state–society relations. Amid rapid social changes brought about by economic liberalisation, the Vietnamese Communist Party and socialist state may no longer be the sole driving force that motivates young people. As they seek to be both in control of and in touch with youth, the leaders of the Party and state find themselves negotiating between maintaining their ideological integrity and accommodating the changing needs and desires of youth. An analysis of recent events demonstrates that youth are no longer merely a subject of political propaganda and mass mobilisation, but instead they have evolved to become an important social actor urging the leadership to further reform itself. As young people express a desire to embrace socioeconomic and cultural changes wrought by processes of marketisation and globalisation, the Party and state are actively reforming themselves not only to respond to young people’s desires and aspirations, but also to strengthen their political authority and leadership, and to consolidate their control and management of youth amid the new conditions of a market-oriented society. Overall, this paper sheds light on the changes in what is considered to be the ‘strategic’ relationship between the state and youth, and the wider process of sociopolitical transformation in present-day Vietnam. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Editorial. Discusses the migration and social change in the highlands of Vietnam. Role of the migration of rural people in the formation of the agricultural frontier; Government's selection of massive in-migration agricultural transformation; Effects of economic liberalization or Doi Moi.

Advocacy represents an intervention into complex, dynamic and highly contextual socio-political systems, in which strategies and tactics must be adjusted on a continual basis in light of rapidly changing conditions, reactions from actors and feedback. For this reason, the practice of advocacy is often considered more art than science. However, capacities and practices for advocacy can be strengthened by sharing and analysing experiences in varying contexts, deriving general principles and learning to adapt these principles to new contexts. Nutrition is a particular context for advocacy, but to date, there has been little systematic analysis of experiences. The purpose of this paper is to illustrate and draw lessons from the practice of nutrition advocacy, especially in relation to stunting and complementary feeding, and suggest ways to strengthen capacities and practices in the future. The strategies and tactics, achievements and lessons learnt are described for three case studies: Uganda, Vietnam and Bangladesh. These cases, and experience from elsewhere, demonstrate that concerted, well-planned and well-implemented advocacy can bring significant achievements, even in short period of time. In light of the global and national attention being given to stunting reduction through the SUN ( Scaling Up Nutrition) movement and other initiatives, there is now a need for much stronger investments in strategic and operational capacities for advocacy, including the human, organisational and financial resources for the advocacy and strategic communication themselves, as well as for monitoring and evaluation, supportive research and institutional capacity-building. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that food and styles of eating have become the predominant markers of social change for the Vietnamese in both Vietnam and in the diaspora. In post-socialist Vietnam the transition to a market economy has allowed for a huge growth in the number of restaurants and cafes, and in the north, a return to an earlier style of cooking. The intense interest and emphasis on food as embodied pleasure has meant that it has come to stand for the transition away from a heavily state-controlled economy. The new configurations of family and friendship are being framed by newly available ways of 'eating out', which are both a means of social display and distinction as well as an indicator of the tensions between reform and festivity within an authoritarian nation-state struggling to define itself in a globalising world. At the same time as food in Vietnam is undergoing rapid transformation so too has the Vietnamese diaspora generationally changed its eating patterns. Although there has been a focus in the literature on food in the diaspora that emphasises the nostalgic and recuperative elements of 'migrant food', I argue that food is the prime mechanism of intercultural engagement for each diasporic generation. For older Vietnamese, Vietnamese restaurants and barbecues have been the sites of interplay between cultural 'tradition' and innovation, and between Australianness and Vietnameseness, and these interstitial places continue to be important for younger Vietnamese. Within this established framework of cross-cultural interaction, for Vietnamese youth, the social settings of 'ethnic food', eaten at home and shared with family, have been grafted onto a sociality of eating fast food. This melding together of both invention and convention, of transgression and ordinariness provides the background against which young people from migrant backgrounds are reinvigorating the social spaces of food consumption and in the process both re-enchanting and destabilising the notion of migrant food. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Utilizing recent research and monographs from participants and observers, this paper reports on the underanalyzed Vietnam antiwar movement. Key events are placed in a historical context that help to explain the origins of the movement. Particular attention is given to the various responses of the state to the challengers and the complex interrelationships with the media. As the antiwar movement grew and developed, there were multiple factors that contributed to solidarity and factionalism within the movement. Despite state repressive actions and internal factionalism, the movement was successful in helping to end the war. The effects on U.S. policies were more indirect than direct. The antiwar movement mobilized millions of citizens to public protest. The demonstrations helped to shift public opinion away from supporting the war and activated third parties to question and demand an end to war policies. The political system did respond to the antiwar movement’s demands. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in 2018–19, this article analyses the changing composition of social protection on the ground in rural central Vietnam, including the recent spread of private life insurance among peasant families. The author uses the concept of portfolios of social protection to denote the emergence of an eclectic mix of measures to manage risks and to prepare for the future in the context of intensified perceptions of risks and the increasing privatization of care. Almost unheard of in this region just a few decades ago, private life insurance has come to be taken for granted by local people, many of whom are involved in precarious trajectories of transnational labour mobility. Underlying the rise of private life insurance in these rural communities is an uncertain process in which new prudentialist rationalities are domesticated into locally meaningful ideas of risk and care. In the context of hypermobility, such mutual entanglement makes it possible for global finance to turn the countryside into a new frontier. The article extends the Polanyian notion of double movement by showing the tendency of social protection to be reincorporated into the realm of the market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article addresses the remarkable growth of Vietnamese market trading in Central and Eastern Europe, notably Slovakia, in the early 1990s, and its subsequent decline. The literature on ethnic entrepreneurship and cross-border petty trading provides partial insights into this phenomenon, but fails to explain the levels of concentration of the Vietnamese in market trading, or the rapid changes in the sector. This article therefore conceptualizes them as being at the nexus of shifting flows of capital, goods and people, and draw on the notion of transnational spaces.